MOBILE, Ala. -- When Herman Thomas' jury could not reach a decision on
14 charges against him this week, the judge in the case could have
declared a mistrial and given prosecutors an option to re-try those
allegations.

Instead, Special Judge Claud Neilson acquitted the former Mobile County
Circuit judge, ruling that prosecutors failed to present sufficient
evidence to sustain a conviction on charges of sex abuse, attempted
sodomy and assault.

View full sizeJudge Claud Neilson's
ruling on deadlocked charges is being scrutinized.
The move denied the Mobile County District Attorney's Office a second
chance to win a conviction on at least some of the dozens of charges
prosecutors filed. But experts said the move is far from unprecedented.

"A very common practice is for a judge to go ahead and see what the
jury is going to do," said John Carroll, a former federal magistrate
court judge who serves as dean of Samford University's Cumberland
School of Law in Birmingham. "That's not unusual."

Neilson, of course, could have tossed out those charges when
prosecutors rested their case. But Carroll and others said judges are
reluctant to take criminal charges out of the hands of a jury.

"If he does it at that point, it's more politically difficult,"
he said. "When a judge finds the government has not presented
sufficient evidence, that's always a subject of great controversy."